I was happy to see the young usvriders that are based in the uk. Good riders that are piling up great experience. Hopefully they are not out of sight out of mind. Grace taylor had a great xc ride.
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One group I forgot to mention, and rarely get the kudos they deserve, and that is the owners. There would be no sport if it werenāt for the owners. So generous, to buy the horses, and pay for the training and the travel.
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I wonder how much a role the course designer played in Boyd and Jennieās decision to go to Burghley. Derekās courses are well-known to both of them and seen as kind. Curious if they would have felt as confident flying those 3 horses over if it had still been a Phillips course.
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He posted on IG, essentially the horse was marvelous in warm up then they disagreed between 1 and 2 and cross cantered and trotted and oh crap thereās a fence.
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Are we far enough out that I can ask someone who knows why Erik Duvander was fired? All the top dogs still train with him, he set up the US for its current success & I have always wondered.
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Cavalier Crystal 
Lovely lovely mare. Super xc and sjā¦ such an appealing expression throughout bothā¦I adore her!
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I have wondered about that for a long time.
Glad several horses that seemed to have a bit of a rough go yesterday sound like they are overall okay.
Great showing for USA! Big congrats to Jennie and FE Lifestyle. Best shod horse and highest placed first timer!
I am of course gutted Thomas had a bit of a whoopsie in showjumping, but he still has gas in the tank. He jumped beautifully once they regained their balance. Kudos to Boyd and his team for their management of the horses. Tsetserlegās sire, Windfall, is still doing well at 31 this year and completed dressage Century Ride with owner Cheryl Holekamp last year with Windfall being 30! I was lucky enough to love on Windfall in March.
Really thrilled for David Doel. I became a fan of his and Galileo Nieuwmoed at KY this year.
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The Brits keep producing young riders that are running around five star courses and doing it well. Yasmin Ingham, Alice Casburn, David Doel (heās 30), Sophie Fouracre (first burghley at 22), Greta Mason (Badminton at 24). Thereās more but that is a competitive Olympic or WEG team right there.
I donāt know how they do it but they have a big pipeline of riders at all ages. They are getting to the five star events in their early twenties.
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we kind of go around this every year. Riding is MUCH more popular over there. Fox hunting is very popular and more common. It is a much smaller country, more compact, so driving great distances over there pales to what we have here. It is not for nothing that their coach is Christopher Bartle. A tremendous talent who just ended a multi-year contract as coach of the German powerhouse. The riders have to ride but is it a coincidence that both countries improved exponentially when he came aboard?
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Producing young tiders is not Bartleās job. He was trainer to the GB eventing team starting with the 1996 Olympics.
Thank you- I am not on IG - so thank you for sharing!
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I wasnāt exactly talking about these newbies. The ones who have been winning are not the newbies but people who have been around awhile. Is it a coincidence that the Germans started winning with him as their trainer? Or was it solely because they had Mici Ingrid and a few others to dominate the world standings? Now he is back home and they are winning a lot. It isnāt a coincidence.
You are not doing Yogi Breisner any favours. During his 17-years as the British Eventing Team Performance Manager he led the team to four successive Olympic team medals as well as five European team titles.The Germans started winning regularly when the rules changed and it suited their horses.Everybody else had to play catchup.
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Eventing is a very popular activity in the UK. Of course it helps that many of the competitions are held in fantastic locations on historic estates, that the royal family includes two Olympian riders and Gatcombe Park, Princess Anneās private home, runs three horse trials each year. That puts serious social kudos on the sport. The only time the mass media has any interest in Eventing is when Zara Tindell is running. If there are photographers carrying cameras with long lenses to be seen, one assumes Zara will be running. Both Badminton and Burghley are in the UK top ten most popular sporting events by crowd attendance numbers (also in top ten are Cheltenham National Hunt Festival, The Grand National and Royal Ascot) and so even the BBC feels compelled to put on some limited coverage. To be fair, it is not a sport made for TV.
Eventing is seen to be an amateur activity, not just for professionals. BE 100 is by far the largest segment of the annual fixture list. There has been a recent growth in well organised unaffiliated shows, running low levels up to 100cm. Professional riders use these too. That raises everyoneās standard: compete against the best to be the best. Capable one-horse amateurs regularly win against Olympians on their baby horses. There are plenty of training and schooling opportunities across the country, with qualified coaches and xc practice fences built up to standard. The Eventing culture expects practice at home and compete when ready to compete because there are plenty of opportunities available. Three hours travel is considered to be a long journey.
The majority of shows are one day and all three phases have published times. It is possible to go to a local competition, run the horse, hang around to collect a rosette and get home again by early afternoon. That allows time for family life, too.
Finally, we and the Irish share two Secret Weapons. Firstly, the wonderful native ponies that children ride, often from an early age, but who are also perfectly happy to carry adult amateurs around a BE 100. The native breeds can turn a useful hoof to multiple tasks with the whole family. The second secret is mothers. A liiiittle bit of an exaggeration but ā¦ A Mother is a person who has been around horses all her life, learnt to ride with her grandfather who won an equestrian Olympic gold medal, she hunts three days a week all winter, has a fantastic line of homebred hunters/eventers descended from the good mare who took her clear round the Europeans as well as Burghley and she is ruthlessly focused on getting her daughter onto The Team, all with the wholehearted support of Granny, Husband and Daughter. They really do exist.
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I was going back and watching some of the XC I missed. It was such fun watching the horses bank the one jump. It would be exactly what my fox hunters would do.
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ā¦also, your taxation and land use policies allow for jumping cross-country nearly everywhere almost all the time.
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Taxation? Hah! The Government has no interest in horses. We do legally protect the perimeter of cities and towns to prevent endless urban sprawl, the āgreen beltā, which the General Population fights to preserve whenever a Government tries to weaken it. More, I think, that our damp, temperate climate produces excellent grass for most of the year so pasture-based food production makes agricultural sense. One reason we have so many cattle and sheep breeds.
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I agree about the balance and time commitment. I am over here now. One person I talked to was able to go to a dressage show, complete and get back home in 1.5 hours!!! I makes it so much easier. They also donāt really do over night shows. So it also makes it a lot less expensive.
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I remember as a kid being able to hack to more than one show. Bliss!
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